The Coming of THE ORB
by Rokhal
Summary: An unexpected visit from Mr. Wakeford throws Robbie Reyes and Eli Morrow into battle with the Ghost Rider's most dastardly foe: THE ORB. Warnings for graphic depictions of violence, mind control, light torture, general awfulness. (Spoiler: Robbie lives.)


This was completed for the Dreamwidth fan-flashworks challenge, "Villain." Obviously, Robbie would have to fight a supervillain. A classic Ghost Rider supervillain. The darkest. The most dastardly. THE ORB.

Content warnings here: violence, injury, social-worker scare, mind-control, and torture. Eli being awful and Robbie listening to him way too much. As I write Robbie, I lean into the fact that he's got a pretty large body count for a Ghost Rider, and while he rarely kills _anymore_, he routinely sends people to the hospital. Don't like, don't read.

* * *

Gunfire cracked the night in automatic bursts, fire and muzzleflare lit the plumes of smoke that rose over a ranch house in Hillyard, Los Angeles. A dozen men swarmed around the house, the smarter ones fleeing over the back fence, the braver ones firing from the broken windows. They wore kevlar vests under their street clothes; the Rider smelled the melted plastic whenever he caught one in his burning chains, seethed at the short delay before the screams started.

Stash houses were usually heavily guarded—they commonly held a hundred thousand dollars or more in cocaine or other merchandise. But this was exceptional.

The Charger roared across the lawn and crashed through the home's living-room wall. The bumper and front panels crumpled against the cinderblocks and straightened themselves while the bricks were still falling, a short pain that the Rider acknowledged only as fuel for the rage that filled him. Fire and sparks coiled around his bones and billowed continuously between his teeth and the vents of his skull. He bounded up to the roof to watch the runners flush out.

Two men bolted out the front window below him, both clutching rifles to their chests. He roared and took a running leap down across the front lawn, flung out a chain that coiled around the men. Hauled them close and bent the rifles over his knee, then started teaching them. He taught them, with his fists and knees and feet and the heat of his breath, to never bring high-velocity firearms into a residential neighborhood ever again.

Behind him, he heard a loud _shoof._

**Ooh!** said Eli.

He glanced back at the house and caught a split-second glimpse of a man with a tube resting on one shoulder before he was flying through the air, his skin all shredded, fire spilling out, limbs ragdolled with shock. He struck the dry tinder of an untrimmed palm tree and fell to the ground, landing on his head.

The men he had caught were just meat and chains and shoes where the grenade had gone off. They wouldn't learn anything now.

He snarled as he gripped the torn edges of his leather skin to seal them back over the fires. His rage billowed up from his core and he shrieked with it, as the Charger rumbled back out of the house, engine roaring and blower shrilling. He stood, watched the man with the tube affix a new rocket to the end.

He started running, fire and sparks spilling out of him. The Charger reversed into him, and he melted into it, congealing into the driver's seat. He stomped on the gas, took another grenade to the windshield that detonated against the glass. The windshield shattered briefly and reformed; the man with the grenade launcher wasn't so lucky.

The Rider roared in frustration. He rammed the Charger straight through the house, chained and bludgeoned every person he saw, because everyone in this house had conspired to bring rocket-propelled grenades to the streets of his city. He knocked out every damn wall in the place.

In the living-room floor, he saw a steel hatch open to a vertical ladder. When he'd run out of men to spend his rage on, he dropped down the hatch into a brightly-lit rock-hewn cellar whose walls were lined with empty weapons racks and bricks and bricks of cocaine. He roared out his frustration until the entire room burned. Finally exhausted, he climbed back up the ladder, melted into the car, and backed out past the groaning bodies of the stash house's guards.

**That's the second time this month** **someone's tried to blow us up,** Eli remarked. **Hurts like hell and this fucker didn't even do us the courtesy of waiting for us to kill him.**

**You totally woulda killed him. Right? They're bringing military hardware, that makes this a war. War gives you a free pass!**

The fires that licked the Rider's bones faded, dowsed in flesh and blood that steamed against his bones and the plates of his skull. Robbie gritted his teeth until the burning eased, worked his dry tongue free from the roof of his mouth. He drove home, keeping to the speed limit, watching the mirrors. His breath was still sickly-sweet and metallic with exhaust fumes. _I just want them to stop,_ Robbie thought. _Stop with the turf wars, and the drive-bys, and the armed guards—or just do it where people aren't trying to live their lives._

**You're not seeing the big picture, kid. **Eli's mental voice tightened with glee. **This shit's escalating.**

_So maybe I should—what, back off? Let them keep recruiting kids and shooting people?_

**No, no-no-no-no. You need to escalate **_**faster.**_ **We're practically unkillable, we never step back. We take it to the next level! Overwhelming force! Make them come to us, **_**begging**_ **for mercy, and then, heh-heh, heh, then we say—**

"Quit the gang or get the fuck out of my city?" Robbie rasped.

**No. We say "No." And then we broil them alive, Jesus, kid.**

_I'm done talking about this. I got work in the morning, I gotta drink a gatorade and sleep._

**That you do, Robbie. Wouldn't want you passing out on the way to work, heh-heh.**

**I still say this shit's escalating.**

* * *

Robbie hated to lend too much weight to anything Eli said, but when he looked back at the past six months—a blur of driving Gabe back and forth between Middle School and the Development Center, graduating high school, work, trying to start a savings account, looking for new street races, and trying to keep the Rider pointed at legitimate targets—East LA and Los Angeles as a whole had been changing. The Underworld was changing. Dealers and traffickers were lying low, and when he found them and hit them, they hit back hard, with automatics and armor-piercing rifles and high explosives. He was afraid to admit that they had to be reacting to the Ghost Rider.

Petty squabbles over turf were fewer, but the gangs seemed stronger with a common enemy.

And he felt eyes on the back of his neck wherever he drove.

* * *

Sunday afternoon in July, and Robbie didn't have work. He was home, trying to ignore the whup-whup of a helicopter hovering somewhere over Hillrock Heights while he took notes on an automotive engineering textbook he'd picked up cheap at the community college bookstore. Couldn't afford night school yet, but if he ever saved up enough of a cushion to do it, he couldn't waste time or money re-taking anything. Gabe was sprawled out on the floor, drawing Grouper Toad in various poses on a roll of butcher paper, a comic propped up on a pillow nearby for reference. Gabe drew huge pictures. Give him a big enough sheet of paper and his tremor disappeared into the scale of the drawing. Gabe finished adding the face to his latest sketch, very carefully, then rolled over onto his back.

"It's so hot, Robbie," he said.

"You want some water?" Robbie offered.

"I wanna swim in the pool," Gabe said. "I love swimming."

There was a hydrotherapy pool at the Development Center, which was closed on Sundays, and anyway was only accessible by appointment with the physical therapists. There was a public swimming pool north of the freeway, but Robbie had never learned how to swim. "Sorry, I don't think I can do that, bud," Robbie said, feeling miserable under Gabe's pleading gaze. "You want a cold bath? That'd cool you off."

Gabe propped himself up on his elbows, thinking, then collapsed boneless to the floor. "Nevermind," he groaned, and shut his eyes.

"You gonna sleep right there?"

"Yeah."

"You want a pillow?"

"Yeah."

Robbie got him a pillow, and Gabe was still and silent for so long that Robbie started to realize he actually intended to have a nap right there on the hard floor. Maybe it was too hot in their apartment. He checked the central air duct, opened and shut the vanes. Nothing. He had to talk to the landlord on Monday.

Someone buzzed the apartment from the exterior door.

Robbie flinched. He left the vent and padded out of the apartment into the common hallway, peered out the peephole.

It was Mr. Wakeford, his old English teacher.

Robbie caught his breath, sense-memory flashing back to the spring when Eli had hijacked his body and almost murdered Mr. Wakeford with a claw hammer. Robbie had managed to get control of his free hand and slugged his teacher in the face, saving him from death-by-Eli but nearly cracking his jaw. He'd spent the rest of the semester avoiding eye contact with him and standing at least six feet away from him at all times, answering any questions in monosyllables, and looking over his shoulder for cops or social workers.

Come to think of it, before Eli had grabbed the hammer last year, Mr. Wakeford had mentioned social services. He'd noticed Gabe seemed afraid to come home. "I'd hate for social services to get involved," he'd said.

"Fuck," Robbie breathed.

The door buzzed again and Robbie bolted back into the apartment. "Gabe," he said. "Gabe. Wake up, bud."

Gabe rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows slowly. "Robbie? Are you scared?"

"No, no—I'm _concerned_, I'm—let's get you back into your chair, okay?"

"What's going on?"

"Nothing. Nothing. I just—you might want to move around a bit."

"I was drawing," Gabe protested as he slung an arm around Robbie's neck. Robbie lifted him with a grunt and set him in his power chair.

"You can draw at the table. Hang on." Robbie grabbed his notebook and ripped out a blank page, then pulled his driver's license out of his wallet. He wrote down his and Gabe's full names and birth dates, his driver's license number, his phone number, and the number for Canelo's Auto & Body on the note paper, struggling to keep it legible. He folded it up and gave it to Gabe. "Keep this in your pocket. This is how anyone can find me. This is yours, don't let anyone take it from you. Promise me?"

Gabe started to tear up. "Robbie?"

Robbie knelt down, reached out, ran his fingers through the hair at the nape of Gabe's neck. "Hey. Hey. Don't be scared. I'm not scared."

"You're lying," Gabe sniffled.

"No. No. Keep this. Keep this and everything's gonna be okay. Promise me, Gabe?"

"Don't go!"

"I'm not going anywhere. This is just in case. Don't be scared, please don't cry. I'm not crying, see?"

"Yes you are," Gabe sobbed, smacking Robbie in the shoulder. "You're lying! Stop lying!"

**You have got to stop underestimating little Gabbie,** Eli said, unhelpful. **Don't worry, he's not going anywhere. Not if they never find that meddling bastard's body.**

The buzzer sounded again. He must know they were home somehow.

"Somebody wants to talk to us," Robbie said, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand. "I'll be right back."

"Robbie!"

"I'll be right back," Robbie called over his shoulder, his voice cracking.

As he stalked the few paces down the common hallway to the exterior door, he threw his shoulders back, sniffed hard, and pulled himself together. **Want me to drive?**

_Fuck off._

**Ungrateful brat.**

He opened the door. Mr. Wakeford stared down at him, an unfamiliar steely expression behind his glasses.

"Hi, Mr. Wakeford. What's this about?" Robbie asked.

**Why's his hand behind his back—**

Mr. Wakeford raised a handgun to Robbie's chest and fired.

Time slowed. Eli was yelling in the back of his head, trying to stoke up his anger and force him to transform, but Robbie was so confused.

The shots felt like three hard punches. He didn't even hear the gun go off, somehow—instead he heard that helicopter hovering close-by. Mr. Wakeford looked just as confused as he did. Robbie took in a breath to ask him what he was doing, but the air bubbled deep in his chest and he coughed.

—**shot you the fucker he **_**shot you**_ **Robbie you are **_**dying,**_ **you're not allowed to die again, come on, kid, **_**wake up, wake up—**_**you gotta roll with it, this fucker walked up to your house and shot us like a bitch! We're not a bitch, Robbie!**

Gabe was yelling from inside the apartment.

Blood dripped down the front and back of Robbie's chest.

Mr. Wakeford looked down at the gun in his hand and set it down on the floor. When he looked up, his face was full of horror. "Oh my god. Robbie?"

**HE SHOT YOU. YOU ARE SHOT. KILL HIM.**

"What did I—did I? Oh my god!"

The helicopter was so close. _I'm dying,_ Robbie realized.

**Yes!**

_What the fuck._

**Kill him!**

Mr. Wakeford caught him as he staggered to the floor, blood all over his hands and his eyes so wide and apologetic, filled with tears, and Robbie's blood began to boil. _How is he sorry? He did it, he killed me, why the FUCK does he get to be sorry?_

**Excellent questions. Beat some answers out of him!**

_I trusted you,_ Robbie mouthed, his breath coming wet and rough.

Mr. Wakeford's hands pressed over the wounds in his chest, heavy, burning. "Oh my god, oh my god." Trying to undo what he'd just done.

The fires flared deep in his core and he shoved Mr. Wakeford away just before his human body burned away into bones and steel. His other body roared to life across the street, engine roaring, blower howling, flames shooting high into the hot blue sky. "_I trusted you,_" he howled, flinging Mr. Wakeford out of the apartment with a rough blow to his chest.

Wakeford struggled up to hands and knees. "What's happening—where—Robbie! Where—I think I just shot someone!"

**Kill him. Kill him. He played on your trust and betrayed you, Robbie! He knows where we live and now he knows who we are! You shoulda let me crack his skull open months ago!**

Wakeford leaned aside, trying to look behind the approaching Rider. "Where'd he go? There's a student back there, I think I shot him, I have to call an ambulance!"

The Rider leaned down, reached through his own shadow and pulled a long steel chain out of the trunk of the car. He snarled and flung it at Wakeford, binding him shoulders to knees, and then bounded over to him, picked him up and shook him. His glasses fell off and the Rider crushed them with one boot. "_Why,_" the Rider snarled.

Wakeford turned his face away from the Rider's breath, eyes screwed shut, hair singing. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't even own a gun but I think I shot him, he needs help now, he needs an ambulance—"

**Get a load of this! Punch his lying face off!**

The Rider shook him some more. _I can't believe he tried to kill me._

**Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men—well now you know, THIS is this cockbite's dirty little secret, he's a killer! Just like your Uncle Eli. Now finish him already!**

"_Why?_" the Rider demanded again. Before Wakeford could babble more useless apologies, something bright and cold burned across the Rider's back and his right arm went numb. He dropped Wakeford involuntarily and collapsed to the dry grass.

All his fury rushed out of him, leaving him weak, diminished. Bones piling up on each-other, his leather skin wrinkling, collapsing. His head felt too heavy to lift, the steel rapidly cooling, the fires not even reaching his vents.

**Fuck. What's—**

His entire right shoulder was gone, fire billowing out of a huge hole in the leather. His right arm dangled by a few seams, cooling bones in an empty sleeve. He clutched his ribs through the hole with his left hand. The gap was too big to seal, the skin was just gone, and flames poured out through it faster than his rage could burn.

**Not good. Get outta here.**

_What happened?_ Behind him, there was a hole burned clear through the bricks of the neighbor's apartment. He followed the trajectory backward and saw a flash of red light. Rolled aside with his fading strength. A six-inch trench gouged into the dirt where his body had been. He looked up and saw the silhouette of a motorcyclist on a bike on the next block.

**Bad shit happened! First Wakeford, now laserbeams. This is a hit.**

The biker's helmet glowed and the Rider dropped through his own shadow into the burning car, dissolved his damaged body into the hot steel. Another trench appeared in the apartment's lawn with a flare of heat and a puff of smoke, just feet from where Mr. Wakeford lay chained. _He's gonna get killed._

**Can't have that, we need satisfaction!**

_Yeah, answers, we need answers._ The Rider hauled out of the top of the car, slowly, his skin dragging as it emerged, whole again, from the steel. The Charger backed around to where Wakeford lay, and the Rider swung down, picked him up by the chains, and stuffed him into the back seat. _I think that weapon really hurt us._

**MOVE!**

The Charger shot backward and a beam that would have pierced the engine block instead vaporized one headlight. The blower screamed, the Rider snarled and spat flame. _**That does it.**_

He slammed into gear and screamed forward, flames spurting from the wheels, the blower, every remaining light.

The motorcyclist's helmet lit up again, but this time they were ready. Eli spun open a portal under their wheels and they dropped into blackness, emerged three feet over the pavement behind the biker, hit the ground with a crash. In the back seat, Wakeford struggled to sit up, the chains loosening. The Rider reached back and jerked them tight again. Then he poured on the gas, melted his body through the steering column and out through the hood to perch above the front bumper like a gargoyle and snatch the biker up by the neck just before crushing the bike into melted shrapnel.

The biker's helmet was a strange, custom design—white, spherical, with a big round window on the front that, instead of revealing the biker's face, was full of metal diaphragms and light-up displays that flashed dizzying patterns, a huge mechanical iris. The helmet whirred and glowed as the biker took a swing at him; the Rider seized it by the bottom edge and yanked, sending the laser blast wide. _That's a huge laser-beam. That's a six-inch wide cutting laser-beam. The energy output of this thing is ridiculous._

He yanked the helmet off. Got a quick glimpse of a snarl of struts and wires before the biker exploded, sending him high into the air and cracking the blower off his engine block with a sharp pain.

The car pulled itself together and followed his flight, caught his landing. He sank into the roof like a raindrop into a puddle. _**Fucking robot. **_**It's cheating! That cheating fuck, kill him!**

He hauled into the driver's seat and stared around wildly.

Wakeford was sitting up again, the chains pooled around his waist. Broken glass peppered his arm and face but he didn't seem to notice. "I saw that guy!" he exclaimed. "That helmet, I remember the helmet! He talked to me this morning! I think the gun was his!"

_You think?_ The Rider twisted around to stare at Wakeford sharply.

"I can't remember. Why can't I remember?"

The Rider reached back and picked glass out of Wakeford's arm, tossed it back into the windshield where it belonged. _He was hypnotized or something. Those flashing lights in the helmet! He's telling the truth!_

**What do you think this is, a comic book? He murdered you, boy!**

_No. Whoever __**sent**_ _him, murdered me._

Cold pain from the car, and his vision blacked out. The engine stilled. The rumble and heat that filled the Rider died away.

**Oh...**_**shit.**_ **Kid. Move.**

_What?_

**We're dying again, pull it the **_**fuck**_ **together, Roberto, the engine, there's another eye guy, he pierced the engine block, we gotta seal off the bad cylinders!**

There was a massive hole burned though the front of the car, all the way through the engine block, piercing the intake manifold, the cylinders, the pistons, leaving the entire engine open to air, unable to pressurize, coolant and oil and fuel all mixed together. He felt the wound's edges singing with pain, unable to join together again: the metal wasn't torn away, it was vaporized. The Rider struggled up in the seat, weak, cold, blind. _How?!_

A busy silence from Eli, tension flitting through every crevice of their cooling steel. **Blood sacrifice!**

_No. The chains._ The chains could become anything the Rider wanted—knives, prybars, wrenches, tools. Now he wanted the chains to become sections of the cylinder head, the exhaust manifold, valves and shafts and cams, parts of this car that he had never touched with his human hands but that he knew intimately, the way he knew the shape of each tooth in his human mouth. He reached through the steel of the door, called the chains into his hand, then dove through the center console into the engine, found the gaping wound in the engine, feeling the ragged edges of melted steel and aluminum, the camshaft cut in half, three cylinders gone, a great hole bored right through the core of himself. He molded the metal of the chains into the gaps, steel kissing steel.

**Blood sacrifice, I'm telling you, you don't have the energy, you need more heat! More life! You're wasting time!**

_He used a teacher to murder me. _The Rider's rage built. _He tried to murder me and he tried to destroy Mr. Wakeford._ The borrowed steel of the chains glowed hot enough to weld. _You'll get your blood sacrifice._

**What, really?**

Patchwork steel mended cylinders, pistols, the cams and the valves and the manifold and the crankcase, all those intricate pieces that made up the Rider's heart. The Rider leaned back out of the engine and twisted the ignition. Sight and power returned. He saw a light out of the corner of his eye, stomped the gas and shot forward. This blast missed them entirely. Took a chunk out of a Toyota down the street.

_You see him?_

**I see him!**

A block to the side, illuminated by the slanting sun, lurked another man in a red jacket on another motorcycle, with another huge spherical helmet shaped like a disembodied eye. That damn helicopter, a little cropduster's dragonfly, was hovering just two telephone-poles over the street, almost on top of him, making his white scarf billow.

**This better not be another fucking robot. **The Rider stomped on the gas and steered straight toward the biker, Eli tense and ready to open a portal the moment the helmet began to glow. But instead, the biker waved frantically at the helicopter, which dipped low toward the ground and lowered a rope ladder. Just before the ladder brushed the ground, the biker abandoned his motorcycle and jumped onto the ladder, and the chopper rose, the biker swaying in the downdraft.

_**Not so fast.**_ The bottom of the ladder was twenty feet in the air when the Charger caught up to it, but the chopper couldn't yet swerve outside the bounds of the street, or it would electrocute the biker against the power lines. The Rider snarled. The Charger's flames whirled around along the ground for yards and yards, flattened by the prop-wash. The biker struggled to climb in midair, rung by rung. The Rider hauled himself up out of the roof, swung what remained of his chains. _**Down.**_

He caught the last rung of the ladder with a hook, steel snagged on aluminum and polyester rope. He sank his feet firmly into the steel, then began to reel the chopper in, hand-over hand, motor revving up and down and blower shrieking with effort.

The biker climbed faster, both from the additional motivation and from the hook stabilizing the base of the ladder. The Rider put the car back in gear and began to fight the helicopter down like a fish, jerking and reversing up and down the street. The biker clung to the ladder, stopped climbing, looked down. His helmet glowed again. The Rider jerked the chain and the shot went wide, bored a new pothole in the street.

The chopper's engine roared and the downdraft pummeled the Rider, but the little helicopter had no chance at lifting the Charger's two ton curb weight. The Rider shook the chain harder and harder as he reeled it in, until finally someone within the helicopter detached the ladder and let the biker plummet to the pavement. Freed of its weight, the helicopter shot into the sky like a spooked pheasant.

The biker rolled to his feet and shook his fist at the departing helicopter. "You cowards!" he bellowed, his voice muffled. "You spineless worthless cheats! You'll never charter another flight again!" Then he turned, helmet glowing, to face the Rider.

The Rider hurled the chains and the ladder at him, caught him full in the face. The biker staggered back, the helmet cracked down the center. He shook the rope and chains off, rolling to the side, as the Charger screeched forward, and the Rider leapt from the hood of the car in a flying tackle.

The Rider landed on him, punched him in the gut, felt the muscled yield of flesh. He ripped the biker's helmet off.

**Bikers are idiots.** It was a human under there, a man by the patches of facial hair and the untamed silver eyebrow that remained, but one entire side of his face was twisted, bald, completely shriveled and distorted in scar tissue, a watery blue eye peeking through mottled red-and-white bands of flesh. Burns, or road rash.

The man was pleading with him, "No," "No, stop," "I'm just a businessman, it's business," and the Rider howled in his face, fumes and fire and sparks. Liquid steel struck the man, spattered his jacket with pinprick burns.

_You tried to kill me._

Hands around his throat.

**Couldn't even get your own hands dirty.**

Wind up, pitch the man across the road. The biker rolled with the impact, practiced, and the Rider had to duck through the pavement and haul out through the Biker's shadow to break his shin before he got away.

_You shot your weapons off in my city._

The Rider roared again as the Charger rolled back and forth over the biker's helmet, grinding it into bits. The biker got a pistol free from the small of his back, fired five times into the Rider's chest.

**Idiot.**

The Rider seized the pistol and struck the man in the face with it, tossed it away into someone's front lawn. Then he seized the man by the scarf and dragged him, kicking and choking and skidding across the pavement, as the car stopped grinding the helmet into bits and turned around to meet them. He flung the biker roughly onto the hood, inches from the flames that jetted from the blower. He reached through the hood and pulled out a knife. Pinned the biker down with one hand on his throat, slashed one of his flailing hands with the knife. A spurt of blood, good. He let the knife melt back into the car and grabbed onto the wound, flipped the biker over, checked the position of the sun, and used his injured arm to paint a south-facing pentagram on the hood.

"You're insane," the biker yelled, jerking against the Rider's iron grip. "Money! I'll give you money! Let me up and we'll talk!"

**You're gonna fix what you broke.** The Rider snarled and ground his face into the hood, slid him aside toward the great wound burned through the sheet metal. **Yes. Look what you did. This **_**hurts,**_ **you old fucker.**

_You came to my home._

_Gabe heard me get shot._

_You know Gabe is connected to the Ghost Rider._

**So he does. **The Rider flipped the man back over, jammed one hand inside his mouth to grab him by the jaw, cranked his head back, pulled that white scarf down from his silver-stubbled throat. Reached through the car for another knife. Came out with a hex wrench. **The fuck is this for? We need a blood sacrifice, not two weeks dicking around with a welder and replacement parts!**

_We already got one—oh, right, you want to slit his throat._ The Rider switched his grip, grabbed the biker's hand and fed his left pinkie finger into the ring of the wrench. _I want to know who else knows about us._

"No! No! Be reasonable! You want me to talk, I'll talk!"

_I want you to listen. _The Rider slammed the man's hand against the hood and snapped his finger. The biker screamed.

**I don't like foreplay with no payoff.**

_Tough shit._ The Rider jerked the wrench away, fed the man's ring finger through it. He had to pin him against the car, one knee on his opposite arm as he struggled to escape.

"No! Why are you doing this? What do you want?"

The Rider snapped another finger. More screaming. Crammed the wrench over the man's middle finger.

He put warning pressure on the wrench, and the biker screamed again in anticipation, hyperventilated when he let off. Then he leaned in, concentrated. Spoke. "_Who paid you._"

The biker screamed. The Rider jiggled the wrench. "_Who. Paid you._"

"I don't know! It was an anonymous drop!" the biker cried out.

"_Who._"

"It's not my business to know, you imbecile!"

The Rider screamed in his face and the blower spat flame.

The biker tried to roll off the hood of the car, but the Rider caught him by the throat. "The Cartels, probably! Or the Russians! Or the Triads, or the FBI or the ATF or the Watchdogs—I've been watching you for weeks and _all you do_ is kick hornets' nests. I don't know who paid me and I don't want to know and even if I did, I'd never betray my professional confidence—"

The Rider snapped the biker's middle finger.

"It was the Russians!" the biker screamed. "They said, ah, they, revenge! It's revenge! For their fallen comrades! They paid in Rubles—"

**Mrrrrgh. Useless. 'Rubles,' pull the other one.**

_He's lying to protect someone?_

**He's making shit up because he has no idea.**

The Rider pinned the biker to the car again, pried straight his last finger, slid the wrench on.

"No. No, please, no, no, no—"

"_Who else knows._"

The biker screamed, bucking and squirming under the Rider's grip.

"_Who did you tell._" Press and release on the wrench.

"Please. Please, please—my boss knows, the, the, Ivanovich, yes, I told him, one person, _I'll help you find him, please don't, please let me go!_"

_He's lying again, isn't he._

**Sticking with the 'Russians' story. He didn't tell a soul, I bet. Wanted the Ghost Rider all to himself. He can take our secret to his grave. **The Rider dropped the wrench, reached through the hood again for a knife.

_No._

**Yes!**

The Rider dumped the biker to the ground, knelt on the small of his back. _No. We can't be that hard to find. More people will keep coming. We have to go to the top, take out whoever's paying guys like this. Or the next one will be faster._

**Don't get smart with me, kid. Kill this one. Now. While we have the chance.**

The Rider grabbed the biker's wallet out of his back pocket, shuffled through the contents. A Wisconsin driver's license, in the name of Drake Shannon, born 1972. A small stack of business cards for "The Orb: Security, Notary Public, Hypnotism, Motorcycle Stunts." The Rider took a card, studied the driver's license.

"_Your blood is on me,_" he hissed. "_I can find you anywhere now._"

The biker stared up at him, his good eye wide and intent, his mouth a grim line.

**Nice to see some faith in me for a change, but _he's right here—_**

_I'm just making shit up. _"_If anyone else comes to my home, I will kill you._"

The biker clutched his mangled left hand in his right, raised them in a pleading gesture. "No. No one else. I won't tell anyone else—"

"_No. You'll help me._"

He shook his head, sitting up slowly on the pavement. "No, you're too—I can't keep heat off you! You drive around in a collectible car, your damn jacket is _the exact same design_ as your spook suit! You goddamn Ghost Riders think you're invincible, but you're idiots! Violent, showboating clowns with no business sense and I'll be damned if The Orb becomes a Ghost Rider's lackey!"

The Rider snarled and loomed over him. "_Get used to it._"

He turned abruptly and stalked back to the car, opened the door so he could carry the business card with him and store it in the glove box. The fires began to fade as he drove away, and he felt the gaping wounds in the sheet metal, the patchwork repairs to the engine, the dangling hoses where the Orb's laser beam had pierced him. The moment he snuffed out, the car would stop running.

He heard the jingle of chains in the back and felt a body shift on the back seat. He spun around, saw Mr. Wakeford sitting up, phone on his lap, chains that had bound him coiled up in the footwell. Wakeford's eyes were hard.

"You tortured that man," Wakeford said.

"_He kills for money,_" the Rider replied, putting the car in gear and watching the road.

"Where are you taking me?"

"_School._"

They rumbled along an arterial in silence, the Rider putting off the car's death as long as possible.

**Still have time to turn around and bleed him out over the gap.**

_I'll fix up the rest with the chains._

**Sure, the steel parts. But we need hosing, too. Glass. Wires. Shit, kid, this'll suck giant sweaty balls and it's completely unnecessary.**

_Guess I'll have to dig up some parts._

"That young man I shot," Wakeford said, holding up the phone. "They...they found blood, but they didn't find him. I can't believe—They found blood. That must mean it was real."

"_The helmet._"

"What?"

"_Mind control._"

Wakeford shook his head, stared down at the phone. "What makes you say that?"

The Rider shrugged.

**Don't do that, you make us look like a bitch.**

"That would make everything easy, wouldn't it," Wakeford mused. "Mind control."

"_No._"

"Perfect excuse."

"_No._"

Wakeford stared at him, and the Rider stared back through the mirror. "If you ever want to talk—I think I'm easy enough for you to find."

The Rider stomped on the gas, and dropped Mr. Wakeford off outside Hillrock High School.

**The Orb's right—you're not subtle. Your brother will never be safe. You've killed for him before. And you'll do it again, soon.**

The Rider raced home, back toward Hillrock Lane, the fires guttering and lowering, the engine beginning to seize for lack of oil. _I need to be smarter about this._

**Kill The Orb! He can't have gone far!**

_I need to keep a lower profile. And if I'm going to stop anyone from coming after us again, I need to look higher up the food chain. Where the money's coming from._

**Interesting.**

**Well. **

**This might finally be a productive use of our time.**


End file.
